When farmer Darvin Bentlage surveyed his southwestern Missouri soybean fields in August, he knew something was amiss in one of them. “I’ve been looking at soybeans for about 60 years, and these didn’t look right,” he says. The plants’ leaves had shriveled upward, taking the shape of little cups: a telltale sign they’d been exposed to […]

The Arctic Golden apple, the first genetically modified apple available to consumers, is making its way to grocery store shelves. I’m an apple loyalist—I pack one as an after-lunch snack nearly every day of the week. So I jumped at the chance to sample this new version of the fruit at a fall event hosted by […]

The drama (background here) surrounding Monsanto’s latest blockbuster genetically modified soybean product grinds on. The enormous seed/pesticide company announced recently that it’s offering farmers a cash reward to spray its proprietary version of an herbicide called dicamba, so long as they spray it on Monsanto’s soybeans that are engineered to tolerate it. Dicamba, of course, is […]

Pyongyang is moving steadily to acquire essential machinery that could potentially be used for an advanced bioweapons program, and analysts warn the regime could quickly surge into industrial scale production of pathogens.

A new book examines the questions raised by the proposed reintroduction of extinct species into their native habitats. In “Rise of the Necrofauna,” CBC broadcaster and science writer Britt Ray examines a number of perspectives on using genetic engineering to foment “de-extinction.”

Genetically modified seed and pesticide giant Monsanto has had tough row to hoe lately. The company’s long-proposed marriage with German chemical giant Bayer is undergoing withering scrutiny by regulators in Europe and Brazil, likely putting off its consummation for months. Here in its home country, two states have imposed new rules that could limit the […]

While Congress hasn't accomplished much in 2017, it did manage to pass a budget resolution -- and within that budget, a sum of $3 million stands out.
Congress appropriated that $3 million to fund the Agricultural Biotechnology Education and Outreach Initiative . That's a partnership between the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) "to provide consumer education on agricultural biotechnology and food and animal feed ingredients derived from biotechnology."
What they're really talking about is a promotional campaign for genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
There are two major flaws with this plan.
First, the FDA is tasked with building a campaign around the "safety and benefits of crop biotechnology." But what about the risks, concerns, and unknowns?
Leaving those out means using government agencies and taxpayer funds for corporate propaganda. It benefits companies like Monsanto, Dow, Dupont, Syngenta, and Bayer, which collectively earn billions of dollars from ...